"Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand--that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us."
~ Annie Dillard, "An Expedition to the Pole"

04 May 2007

Books on the floor no more

After weeks of my stacks sadly sitting on this side of the balcony, we found the perfect bookshelves. The last time I bought shelves (Boston, 2003) a friend and I lugged the ridiculously heavy box home on the T. This time (Santa Marta, 2007) I rode home (with the same kind of ridiculously heavy box) in a taxi from one end of town to the other. A white sticker on said box proclaims, "Línea California, Hecho en Colombia." (As I dragged the box through the front door, I realized that those words could be used to describe me...)

“There are those who maintain that you can't demand anything of the reader. They say the reader knows nothing about art, and that if you are going to reach him, you have to be humble enough to descend to his level. This supposes that the aim of art is to teach, which it is not, or that to create anything which is simply a good-in-itself is a waste of time. Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. We hear a great deal about humility being required to lower oneself, but it requires an equal humility and a real love of the truth to raise oneself and by hard labor to acquire higher standards.” ~ Flannery O'Connor